1. Field of the Description
The present description relates, in general, to amusement park rides and other entertainment rides such as round rides, and, more particularly, to amusement or theme park rides configured to provide passengers with a more organic or less mechanical and highly variable flying experience by providing a unique mounting of the passenger vehicle at the end of each boom or support arm.
2. Relevant Background
Amusement and theme parks are popular worldwide with hundreds of millions of people visiting the parks each year. Park operators continuously seek new designs for rides that attract and continue to entertain park visitors. Many parks include round rides that include vehicles or gondolas mounted on boom or support arms extending outward from a centrally located drive or rotation assembly. The passengers or riders sit in the vehicles and are rotated in their vehicles in a circle about the drive assembly, which spins about its central axis.
During rotation, the guests operate an interactive control device, such as a joystick provided in the vehicle, to cause the support arm and their attached vehicle to gradually move upward or downward by changing the vertical angle of the rigid support arm. While these rides are popular with younger children, these rides are typically not considered an exciting ride that appeals to older guests as the rides often rotate at less than 10 revolutions per minute (RPM) and are repetitive with very small ranges of user-controlled motion.
When designing new rides, park operators have a great amount of freedom to develop rides with very different configurations such as roller coasters and the like that allow the guests to travel at high speeds and experience high accelerations as their vehicles travel around corners and dips. However, park operators face a different challenge when they attempt to refurbish or modify an existing round ride to create a new ride that appeals to older guests as well as to younger guests. Built and installed round rides are closely integrated into an area and are surrounded by other elements such as other rides, landscaping, facilities, kiosks, and so on. Therefore, a design challenge is to provide a ride that appeals to older guests within the space currently occupied by the round ride that it is being designed to replace. Even more attractive to the park operator would be a ride configuration that made use of at least some of the original ride components such as the circular drive assembly as this significantly reduces start up costs and allows continued use of a proven drive system.
While existing round rides provide a general soaring or flying experience, the relatively low rotation rate and “generic” or overly predictable experience have been significant barriers to the variability of excitement and ride experiences that could be provided with a ride based on a round iron ride design. This typically results in passengers only riding a round ride once per park visit instead of multiple times as is the case of many thrill rides. As a consequence, park operators desire a more exciting and user-variable ride that retains the simplicity, affordability, and appeal for multi-arm rotating rides that enhances passenger enjoyment for passengers of all ages.